Oh, and I also have seen a lot of small businesses adapt. A local ice cream place has started delivering "quarantine quarts" and is routinely selling out.

As long as those things stay around and people have the option to do that, I could see people continuing to do that instead of going out to spend their money.

But people will be forced to go back to jobs. Many of which will not have good social distancing practices. Interestingly, today I was working in a near=by town. Here, you have to curbside or drive through almost all restaurants. I went by Firehouse subs there, and you could walk right to the counter. Six people were packed behind the counter, shoulder to shoulder, with no masks.

I do have a bit of a chuckle when we are told that "we need to trust businesses to do the right thing."

I mean, I can't trust Popeyes to get me a drive-thru order without four mistakes in it. But they are suddenly going to be following CDC advice to the letter?

I agree with this.

I've read that microwaving to reheat food will likely kill the virus (not proven from what I could find). So told the wife that any outside food we get should be pickup and we will microwave.

Treating all of the packaging as though it has coronavirus on it is probably the most important thing, nuking the food a short bit extra is something I've seen recommended as well.

It is theoretically possible to transmit the disease through food or food containers, but very unlikely. I read the following analysis from an op-ed in the Washington Post written by Joseph Allen, a professor at Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health:

In the epidemiological world, we have a helpful way to think about it: the “Sufficient-Component Cause model.” Think of this model as pieces of a pie. For disease to happen, all of the pieces of the pie have to be there: sick driver, sneezing/coughing, viral particles transferred to the package, a very short time lapse before delivery, you touching the exact same spot on the package as the sneeze, you then touching your face or mouth before hand-washing.

TBH, I can see all of this happening with a pizza or chinese take out.

Maybe not so much at the tier 1 fast foods like McD, Wendy's, BK etc. because I have to believe everyone working there are hyper-aware and viligent (I hope) but not so sure with Domino's and their delivery guy.

Finally braved doing my monthly 401k/IRA accounts (purposely avoided Feb & Mar). The S&P and Dow are down about 15-18% right now.

Added up my stuff and I'm down about 8% from the high in mid-Feb. We did continue to contribute to 401k during the past 2 months and that helped.

Crazy market though. Record unemployment rates, likelihood it'll be a while before we are back to new normal, and a global recession ... the market going up the past couple weeks is not what I would have expected but am grateful for the seeming (albeit irrational IMO) positivity.

I am hedging with some short-the-S&P instruments, and have been losing money there the last couple of weeks. It's a weird mentality.

Put me in the camp of "why the hell have the markets rebounded so much?"

If anything, if feels like the news has gotten worse in terms of economic recovery over the last week or two.

I mean, I don't want a major market crash. But I'm also having trouble seeing the reason for optimism here.

The initial crazy drop was back in the time of 1-2 million projected U.S. deaths, so I guess people think they're finding values now.

But bigger drops could come down the road if and when the economy doesn't turn back on like a light switch, if there's some other secondary collateral economic issue that springs out of this, and I think, when the longer-term impacts of greatly reduced tax revenues, and the ways governments try to deal with that, start to take hold.

The secondary fallout from all this is going to be a months long slog unless the job market comes back with roaring numbers right away. I have to believe that companies are going to be slower to bring people back, because people, in general, are going to be hesitant to spend their money right away when they do.

U.S oil price down to almost 4$ a barrel. Time to build a storage facility in my backyard.

No need, you can just do this:

Woman Fills up plastic bag with fuel - YouTube

We need a where is she now update.

Seriously, I wish there was a way to lock in gas prices now on a contract, as I do for my heating oil. I'd split the difference somewhere between price last month and now if I could get a lock for the year.

There was a website that used to let you do that, for a price. It disappeared and left everybody holding worthless contracts for gas they bought. (Mygallons.com) And I know some regional gas stations and supermarkets did that too, more legitimately. It never worked out well for the companies.

The price of WTI could go negative.

That's insane. And we have the last pre-production cut waves of Saudi Oil still coming in.

Buckle up folks. It's about to get strange.

I'm glad oil prices are down. I hope this crushes OPEC and like (including Russia). Tired of them building playgrounds in the desert with our money.

The 2 caveats are I do hope the fracking/drilling companies can turn off/pause with minimal impact and that alternate energy solutions (hurry up Elon Musk and like) continue to grow. The former will likely take a hit but hoping we have hit the paradigm shift where there is no stopping the latter.

This price crash is pretty limited to the May contracts, longer contracts are falling, too, but nowhere near the way the May contracts are crashing. June is still over 21 dollars.

That split alone seems like it would make it very worthwhile to fill any free storage you may have.

Basically, the May contract

A) ends soon
B) Has no place to put it
C) Is pretty much guaranteed to have coronavirus restrictions all month.

The difference between May and June is the HOPE that some restrictions will be lifted by then. (and the fact that they have a month to go before THEY close)

Hmm, Starbucks or 500 barrels of oil?

We're heading to reverse Mad Max, instead of raiding supplies of oil, raiders will roam the post apocalyptic wastelands forcing people to take oil.

Here's the nuts thing. IT STARTED AT EIGHTEEN BUCKS TODAY

I think I should have bought all the oil when it was at -22 cents.

Nah, now's the time to buy. It's -35 BUCKS.

https://www.tradingview.com/x/kujxPjKQ/

That's holy shit in a graphic.

Yeah. Buying at -22 cents would have been a shit investment.

dola

I wonder how many jobs are going to vanish even after things return to normal. My wife's healthcare company has already made it clear that the forced Tele-Doc alternative has been so successful that they don't ever anticipate going back to the pre-virus staffing levels. I wouldn't be surprised to see this industry-wide, and then I wonder how many other industries will discover other means of work with fewer employees.

...and smaller office spaces as they realize that x% of their workforce can be just as productive from home. Why pay for 5,000 square feet of office space when you realize you can get by with only 2,000?

There's always those managers and directors (like some in my management chain) who require onsite micromanaging to feel their people are doing work.

SI

We actually began this in 2019 for my day job. Made most of our sales staff remote - as well as some in IT. What ended up being a positive for CovID, we moved the rest of our IT into a smaller annex late last year. So, in the event I have to go into the office once or twice, I will only be in a building with 3-4 people (and no other contact).

I think moving forward we will continue to allow many spots to work remotely from time to time given how this has gone so far.

I am probably with a ton of managers who would have said some watered-down version of this months ago... "just not sure what I'd be getting if all my staff worked from home."

Now, I and others like me are surely realigning this impression. Some person by person, but some globally. My general confidence with my staff is awfully high, they are delivering pretty well through this.

This was the idea the FCC had a few years ago when looking at a lease renewal for a very expensive building that they were already fairly overcrowded in. Encourage working from home, have workers who need to come into the facility on occasion work from unassigned docks/workstations set aside for that purpose. I am not sure what ever became of it. (Probably scuttled, being an Obama-era thing.)

Walmart CEO Doug McMillon to @JimVandeHei on paying his workers more during the crisis and beyond: “I don’t like to think of that as hazard pay, because it diminishes why our people are coming to work...They’re coming to work because they want to serve." #AxiosOnHBO pic.twitter.com/5aFwzJOmIm

— Axios (@axios) April 28, 2020

No, they're coming to work because they need the money. They won't see more pay as diminishing their work, I assure you.

I find myself having far less informal conversations with people at work. There's a subset of problems where people would wander into my office (or vice versa) with a "Hey, I've got this issue, and what do you think about . . . " But it doesn't feel quite worth bothering someone with an email or a phone call about. So now the conversation just does not happen.

I am not sure how much value those conversations provide to the office as a whole. I know it is greater than zero. I do not know if it is greater than what we would save by having less office space.

In our particular office, the question is moot b/c we just signed a ten-year lease in our new space, so we wouldn't be able to shrink and save money. But I am sure that these conversations are happening economy-wide now.

also, unrelatedly, we are one good rally away from Dow 25,000 again.

I hope that the markets are seeing something that I am not. I still don't see the reasons for optimism that they do over the medium (12-18 month) term. But this sustained rally from the bottom has been going on long enough that there has to be something behind it, right?

My oldest has been working as a janitor at a local college. A new company took over, interviewed and hired some of the old crew. They started with around 12-13 full and part time. They fired all the part time Jan 1. That cut them to about 8. One was a 66 yr old woman who fell and got hurt. She never came back. Another was an older man who they told they were considering getting rid of, despite that he had been there for over 20 years. Another fell and broke a hip. THEN Covid hit and they kept working. They were down to 5 full time for a college campus and essential. Overtime was everywhere, they promised reviews for job raises for those who stayed on, then this week, lo and behold, the day of the job reviews? Both supervisors called off.

The next time they were back, no mention of it.

The company won't tell them what the plan is for jobs. The crew is doing all the summer work they would normally do right now. Rumor is that they might be furloughed the end of this week. But the company still won't stay. Oh, except the company did say, they might make all of them work one day, and pay them for like a half week or something, but I don't buy that one at all. Either way, they are some pretty low life, shady dealers.

NKU?

Basically unlimited money from the government for publicly held companies will do that. I agree with your bigger point, though. The problems in the economy are largely outside of publicly held companies and the relative stability of the market is convincing too many people that things will quickly get back to normal.

No Thomas More...

Friend of mine jumped on Beyond Meat about 3 weeks ago at $60 a share and it's sitting at $101 right now.

With the Dow almost back up to 25K, I think it's time to get my wife into cash in her 401k for a little bit while the next couple of months sort themselves out.

SI

I was thinking that myself but I'm going to hold for now, I don't need that money for expenses right now.

My gut (which is in no way accurate) tells me it'll go back down again as people realize the impact of unemployment, recession, lost revenue etc. But then again it could go back up another 2,000 points with good Gilead & like news ... so I think I'll hold for the roller coaster ride.

Let's do a thought exercise. I've been hearing elsewhere about a possible "Eagle Plan".

The basics are:

You would get $10,000. On the spot. No strings except:
You cannot claim Social Security for one extra year (for example, instead of 67, 68).

That's a Sophie's Choice isn't it?

It depends on how many years left you have till collecting SSN, the assumed annual return - inflation. As an average, you are supposed to double every 8-9 years in the market (does not factor in inflation).

If you are 20 years old, its a no brainer, take the $10K and invest it. Over 40-45 years or 5 "cycles", you'll have 10K x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 = $320K.

If you are 65 where you have 1-5 years of growth at most, probably make sense to pass.

It still boggles my mind when they release horrible data about how bad the economy is shrinking and then the market shoots up. Put me in the camp that thinks we have another big leg down coming sometime in the near future.

Curious where you have seen this Eagle Plan discussed. I've never heard of it before.

I'm 35 and I'd take it in a heartbeat. That $10,000 invested in an S&P index fund is going to be about $200,000 by the time I'm 65.

I'll be lucky if social security is even around.

They will just keep printing money to prop up the markets. The Fed is buying corporate junk bonds ffs.